City of Blackhawk
Known as the Zircon of the Mercenary Coast, the City of Blackhawk is a sprawling, ramshackle mishmash of architectural styles that reflect the chaotic history the city, heaped high over a complex maze of sewers, caverns, science labs, burrows, lairs, military bunkers, catacombs, and hellmouths. The city is well-known for its graft and corruption, the enormous number of improbable brotherhoods, secret societies, guilds, cabals, and political action committees, and is notorious for its tumultuous political culture. At any given time, two to six competing and combative rulers (anarcho-capitalist gladiators, hell-doxy cabals, bloodthirsty Klengon bureaucrats, mad sorcerers, Colossus-grade RoboDroids, cool insidious vegetable intelligences, slavering multi-planar entities, fictitious holographic glad-handers, psychopathic pirate clown sodalities and so on) vie for dominion over the teeming metropolis; the identity of the actual ruler (the Chancellor) is often a matter of opinion. Followers of each faction often wear distinctive symbols (e.g., mismatched boots, loincloths worn on the outside, prosthetic foreheads on their real foreheads) and street violence is a given. The city's massive underworld (in all senses of the word) draws an enormous quantity of would-be dungeon divers in search of treasure, magic, employment, and thrills. Contrary to Blackhawk's tireless public relations cult, the majority of such adventures end tragically. (For this reason, the funeral industry is such a major part of Blackhawk's economy that the Guild of Morticians, Embalmers, Cremators, Organleggers, Gastromorts, Sepulturalists, and Necrosculptors receives a hefty fee for every resurrection performed in the city). There are enough successes, however, to keep the city's taverns, brothels, pawnbrokers, ring fingerers, crystal scryers, armor polishers, droidskinners, and potion-slingers in business. In addition, many of the freebooters of the Mercenary Coast sponsor representatives in Blackhawk. (In the years since the collapse of the sector's power grid, an increasing surge of technological items and hitherto-unknown creatures such as Astrowraiths have been pouring out of the dungeons, in a quantity far exceeding the number of such items being carried into the dungeons. Speculations on a hitherto-undiscovered hyperdimensional portal or the presence of an ancient, buried starship have as yet remained unsubstantiated.) Besides the Dungeons of Blackhawk, two other Blackhawk institutions have gained notoriety far and wide. The Grand Library of Morgendorgen was founded by one of the city's former rulers, with the aim of housing the greatest accumulation of knowledge in the world. Its collection of magical librams, tomes, holo-crystals, codices, folios, atlases, 8-tracks, maps, lexicons, viz-tapes, monographs, almanacs, and every other form of recorded knowledge is indeed impressive, but most recent Chief Librarians have been more concerned with quantity over quality. Thus, every available pigeon-hole has been stuffed full of collections of lizard-man erotica, memoirs of the many loves of the Iron Dwarf King's Executive Hash Slinger, advertising brochures from the Limb Traders, etc. Also notorious, simply known as The Casino, behind its neon-lit and gold-plated exterior is a neon-plated, gold-lit interior. No one native to Blackhawk may gamble within (a regulation which was ramrodded into law by the Brotherhood of Document Forgers and Disguise Merchants). Gamers may partake of food, beverages, and narcotics free of charge. Many valuables, tangible and intangible, are wagered within; gamblers risk their gold, eyeballs, fingers, spouses, children, gonads, years of their lives, their freedom, their immortal souls, and even more for another turn of the Octagon of Fortune. Famous denizens of Blackhawk * Digby the Toematurge, noted for his many foot- and toe-related spells (Digby's Toenail Trimmer, Digby's Appalling Fetor, Digby's Hairy Toe-Knuckle, Digby's Righteous Butt-Kicking, Digby's Extra Digit, etc.) * Denser the Undermage, creator of Denser's Levitating Trapezoid, Denser's Oenic Transformation, Denser's Depilator (Minor and Major), Denser's Eye of the Bat, and many more popular spells. * Morgandorgan the Merely Adequate, who founded the Grand Library of Morgandorgan. *Draculoid X, who owns the most complete of the three extant copies of the Compendium of Avak-Horsh the Unwise. *Effluvius Vox, possibly the finest scholar in Vanthian history. *Sister Anathema the Unorthodoxy, High Priestess of St. Ecstasia's School for Wayward Virgins. Locations * Warlock Cafe Category:Vanth Category:Non-canon